


Things We Left Unsaid

by radiofreekerberos



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining Shiro (Voltron), SHEITH - Freeform, Sickfic, Voltron season 7 missing scene, Whump Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 16:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15867192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiofreekerberos/pseuds/radiofreekerberos
Summary: “Hey, hey, you’re okay,” a voice says softly, Shiro’s voice. A warm hand wraps around Keith’s clenched fingers. “I know it hurts, but you’re gonna be okay. I promise.” Artificial fingers caress his cheek. “Just try to relax.” Keith just lays there, breathing deeply and shivering as he listens to Shiro’s soft words. “That’s it,” Shiro murmurs softly, “deep, slow breaths.” There’s movement somewhere off to the right. Burning warmth travels up Keith’s arm and the pain recedes in a numbing tide that leaves him drifting close to sleep. His limbs turn to lead and his head is wrapped in cotton and Shiro’s soft words follow him back down into darkness.A season 7 missing scene.





	Things We Left Unsaid

The first time Keith wakes, it’s all too much. Everything is ringing. It’s too loud. His head feels big and heavy and full of static. It’s too bright. He groans and screws his eyes more tightly shut. He has to get away. It doesn’t matter where, he just needs to escape the noise. He blindly claws at the damp bed sheets twisted beneath his fingers, but moving… hurts. A sharp stab of pain shatters his forehead like broken glass moving beneath his skin. He whimpers and cradles his head, trying to collapse in on himself. His belly is crawling with nausea. He shudders and draws his knees up to his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible, maybe if he concentrates hard enough, he can disappear altogether. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” a voice says softly, Shiro’s voice. A warm hand wraps around Keith’s clenched fingers. “I know it hurts, but you’re gonna be okay. I promise.” Artificial fingers caress his cheek. “Just try to relax.” Keith just lays there, breathing deeply and shivering as he listens to Shiro’s soft words. “That’s it,” Shiro murmurs softly, “deep, slow breaths.” There’s movement somewhere off to the right. Burning warmth travels up Keith’s arm and the pain recedes in a numbing tide that leaves him drifting close to sleep. His limbs turn to lead and his head is wrapped in cotton and Shiro’s soft words follow him back down into darkness. 

The second time Keith wakes, he’s missing time. The last thing he remembers is Voltron fighting the robeast 2.0 and then… nothing. He hears voices over inter-comms, doctors being paged, monitors beeping. His fingers gingerly move to the bandage wrapped around his head and the thick pad of gauze covering the stitches he can feel pulling at his brow. He winces and tries to open his eyes, but his eyelashes are stuck together. He frowns and swipes at them. His fingers come away covered in some sort of thick ointment like vaseline.

“Here, let me,” Shiro says. He’s still there, though Keith has no idea how much time has passed since he last woke. A moment later, his eyes are being carefully swabbed clean with a damp cloth. “You sleep with your eyes slightly open by the way,” Shiro says, something like a smile hidden in the soft tones of his voice. 

“Mmmuuurrrgh,” Keith says, and frowns because that’s not what he meant to say. His tongue feels five sizes too big for his mouth and his head is filled with bees. He tries again. “Uh… thers okay?” he manages finally. 

“Everyone’s fine,” Shiro says. “They’ve been up and around for days. Everyone but you, but then you always were stubborn to the last,” he says in that dark wry way that means he’s trying to hide how concerned he really is. 

Keith feels immediately guilty for worrying him. His eyes flutter open, but the room is too bright and he flinches beneath the glare of the harsh white lights. “Lights to twenty-five percent,” Shiro says, his artificial hand casually resting on Keith’s shoulder. It’s warm in a way that his Galra hand never was. Comforting, and far more suited to Shiro’s compassionate nature. “Better?”

Keith blinks and nods in the dim light. Shiro pulls up a chair beside the bed. “I can’t stay long,” he says a little sheepishly, “I have to give a speech in an hour. They promoted me to Captain and made me the permanent commander of the Atlas,” he says somewhat chagrined. “Crazy huh?”

It’s the least crazy thing Keith has ever heard. It takes too much effort to speak, so he offers his silent congratulations by covering Shiro’s hand in his. Shiro smiles and brushes the back of Keith’s hand with his thumb, carefully, so as not to dislodge the IV taped to it. There’s something on his mind. He presses his lips together and lowers the handrail on the bed, then climbs in next to Keith. 

“Is this okay?” He asks. Keith just rolls over and scrunches himself up against Shiro’s chest with his throbbing forehead buried in the nape of Shiro’s neck. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Shiro says, chuckling softly. “You rest. I’m just gonna sit here and talk for awhile, okay?”

“Mmm,” Keith murmurs in agreement. 

Shiro’s disembodied arm grips his shoulder, wrapping him up in protective warmth. “Adam died,” he says without warning. Keith knows. He’d wanted to say something earlier. It just never felt like the right time, what with all the recon missions and the debriefings and... Voltron. “I was really looking forward to seeing him.” 

Of course he was. Why wouldn’t he be. Keith bites his lip as something very close to jealousy consumes him, which is stupid since he and Shiro have never had that kind of relationship. Besides he’s the one who keeps calling Shiro his brother, even if the word is inadequate and doesn’t quite express everything Shiro means to him. Anyway what’s the point in trying to compete with a ghost.

“Looking forward to seeing him happy, I mean,” Shiro hastily explains as color rises in his cheeks. “I was really hoping that he’d finally found someone who deserved him.” 

Keith pulls a face. What’s that supposed to mean, someone who deserved him. Like Shiro didn’t deserve him? As if having his own ambitions somehow makes him too inconvenient to love. What is this 1950?

“Don’t look at me like that,” Shiro says, flashing him a self-deprecating smile, “I’m not beating myself up over it or anything.” 

Keith raises a skeptical eyebrow. 

“Okay, maybe I am beating myself up a little, but it was... easier to walk away from him than it should’ve been.” He sighs and rakes his flesh and blood fingers through his pale hair. “You know, there’s a reason why I was always the youngest; youngest sub-orbital flight, youngest orbital flight, youngest pilot to lead an off planet mission. I had to move fast, before I couldn’t move at all.” 

Keith bites his bottom lip. Shiro is treading dangerously close to forbidden subjects, and secrets that have never been Keith’s to tell, though that hasn’t made them any easier to live with.

“I’ve always had to live in the moment out of necessity,” Shiro continues, staring off into space, “but that’s not exactly great for a long-term relationship. Adam and I… we wanted different things. He wanted a future, but all I could give him was today. It’s all I’ve ever had.” He worries his bottom lip for a moment, his artificial fingers tracing lazy circles over Keith’s back. “Until… now,” he says softly. His eyes stray to Keith’s face, “because the thing is, when they attached this fancy new Altean arm, they also ran a whole bunch of tests and I’m… I’m… cured Keith.”

Keith lays there holding his breath, not quite trusting his fuzzy brain to correctly interpret what he’s just heard. He’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. “It’s true,” Shiro tells him. “My disease… it’s not just in remission, it’s gone. It’s like it never even existed. This body is... perfect.” He flexes his artificial fingers. “Well, almost,” he shrugs. 

Keith tries to concentrate on breathing in and out, in and out, until something very much like a sob escapes his throat. The dam breaks and suddenly he’s crying, great spitting sobs that make his eyes burn and his chest ache. Maybe it’s the drugs that are still so clearly muddling his thoughts, or the dull thud of pain relentlessly hammering away behind his eyes, but something shifts inside him. Some nameless thing he’s lived uncomfortably with for years. The inescapable knowledge that no matter how many times he saves Shiro, no matter how hard he tries to protect him, he was always going to lose him in the end to some nameless disease he was powerless to stop. 

“It’s okay,” Shiro whispers, holding him close. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore.” Keith sobs into Shiro’s chest, his trembling fists balled up in his jacket, wrinkling his perfectly pressed dress uniform. “You don’t have to keep putting yourself in harm’s way for me.” Shiro gently brushes the hair from Keith’s eyes with his flesh and blood fingers. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m gonna be around for a long time, so long, you’re gonna get sick of me,” he says wryly.

“Never… happen,” Keith gasps, half-crying, half-laughing.

“You say that now,” Shiro says dryly, almost but not quite resting his chin on the top of Keith’s shaggy head, “but you’ve been unconscious for two weeks and I’ve had a lot of time to think about the future, and I realized something when I saw the black lion falling out of the sky. I realized there was no future for me without you.”

Keith sniffs and stares at his hands. Embarrassed, he releases his grip on Shiro’s uniform and anxiously tries to smooth the wrinkles out of the crumpled fabric. He’s exhausted and his head feels like it’s filled with cement and Shiro’s words have left him inexplicably off balance and reconsidering feelings he’s always kept locked away for fear of having his heart shattered once Shiro was gone.

“Keith, leave it,” Shiro says softly, taking Keith’s fretful hands in his. He smiles. “You have no idea what I’m talking about right now do you.”

“Not… really, no,” Keith admits. 

Shiro chuckles and shakes his head. “Of course you don’t, because what the hell kind of idiot decides to confess his feelings to someone when they’re concussed and medicated.” He sighs. “It’s just… when I saw you laying in the black lion… I thought I’d lost you and... I remember what you said to me on the clone base Keith,” Shiro says. He cups Keith’s chin in his flesh and blood hand and runs his thumb over the livid scar discoloring his cheek. “I remember everything.”

Keith swallows, his eyes widening slightly. “How…?” 

“Altean magic? I guess?” Shiro shrugs. “I don’t really understand it myself. I don’t know why I remember, I just… do and I don’t want to make the same mistakes with you that I made with Adam. I don’t want to shut you out of my life. I don’t want things left unsaid between us. I want…”

“What?” Keith asks.

“You,” Shiro says softly. “I want you. I _love_ you Keith, as a friend and a brother, and as so much more. You’re… you’re everything to me, but it’s okay if you don’t feel the same way. I’m not trying to pressure you into anything, I just… wanted you to know.”

Keith stares at him. Then he hauls himself up into a sitting position as Shiro frets and sputters “easy, easy, easy,” next to him. “Jesus, you’re like a wrecking ball,” he says, somehow managing to make it sound like an endearment. That’s just Shiro though, endlessly charmed by the qualities everyone else seems to find annoying in Keith. 

Keith blinks stars and smiles, though sitting up is making his head spin. He grabs Shiro by the collar, as much to steady himself as to draw him in close, then he kisses him… on the lips… kind of awkwardly. It’s not like he’s had a lot of practice after all.

“I’ll...” he says, disengaging from Shiro in sudden embarrassment. “I’ll get better at that… also, sorry about the coma breath.”

Shiro just smiles and kisses him again. It’s soft and patient and a little tentative. He holds Keith’s face in his warm hands and Keith can feel his soft lips and taste his sweet breath and feel him still smiling. He’s a smile-kisser. Of course he is.

“So does this mean you _don’t_ love me like a brother?” Shiro wryly asks after they part.

“I just… love you,” Keith says, blinking sluggishly. “I think I always have.”

Shiro smiles and brushes the hair out of Keith’s eyes. “Okay,” he says. “Now lay down you maniac.” Keith smiles and lets Shiro fuss over him for a minute, easing him back down onto the bed and making a show of straightening his blankets and fluffing his pillow. 

An alarm goes off and Shiro startles and glances at his wrist. “Shit, I have to go,” he says. “I really don’t want to.”

“It’s okay,” Keith says. “We have time now,” time to live a life that extends beyond this moment. For the first time since Keith can remember, the future seems full of endless possibilities, and Shiro will be there to share it with him. It’s a gift, one he doesn’t intend to squander.

Shiro sighs and gets up. He replaces the handrail on the bed and moves the chair back into the corner and all the while his disembodied fingers remain firmly clasped in Keith’s hand. Keith would laugh if he weren’t so tired. That’s gonna take some getting used to. 

“Get some rest,” Shiro says, brushing his lips again in a feather soft kiss. “It took a while to get the communication grid back online, but your mom is on her way now. She’ll probably be here before I get back.”

“Mmmm,” Keith murmurs, his heavy eyes closing.

“Love you,” Shiro whispers in his ear and Keith smiles before drifting off.

The third time Keith wakes, Kolivan and his mom are there. Keith smiles and turns his head at the sound of cheering coming from outside the window, and knows that Shiro’s speech is going well. He feels better. 

He feels loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on the [tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)


End file.
